In the ignominious tradition of camera-hogging police chief Charles Moose (remember him?), Pima County (AZ) Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has become America’s new worst celebrity lawman. While he cuddles up to MSNBC’s entire Tea Party-bashing line-up, more facts about Tucson massacre suspect Jared Loughner’s encounters with law enforcement are coming out. We now learn: “The police were sent to the home where Jared L. Loughner lived with his family on more than one occasion before the attack here on Saturday that left a congresswoman fighting for her life and six others dead, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday…The news of police involvement with the Loughners suggests that county sheriff’s deputies were at least familiar with the family, even if the reason for their visits was unclear as of Tuesday night.”

Sheriff’s Department and community-college officials in Pima County are refusing to release a wide range of public documents about the man charged in Saturday’s shooting rampage that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and Pima Community College have declined to release documents that could shed light on run-ins they had with 22-year-old Jared Loughner in the months prior to the shooting.

The Arizona Public Records Law requires that records be “open to inspection by any person at all times” unless officials can prove releasing the information would violate rights of privacy or confidentiality or otherwise harm the best interests of the state.

The Arizona Republic requested that records, including incident reports on campus and calls for dispatch of deputies to Loughner’s home, be released under the law. Such reports are often released as a matter of course in criminal cases.

College officials have not indicated when or if they will release the information, saying they want prior approval from the FBI and are concerned about violating federal laws protecting the privacy of student information. The Republic did not request student academic records.

There are many heroes who showed indomitable courage and grace under fire during this weekend’s horrific Tucson massacre. Blowhard Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was not one of them.

If the White House has any sense, President Obama will stay as far away from the demagogic Dupnik and his media entourage when he visits Arizona on Wednesday to memorialize the victims. Indeed, if the White House is truly committed to unifying the country, it will explicitly disavow Dupnik’s vulture-like exploitation of the shooting rampage.

Within hours of the bloody spree, Dupnik mounted more grandstands than a NASCAR tour champion. A vocal opponent of S.B. 1070, the popular state law cracking down on illegal immigration, Dupnik immediately blamed Arizona for becoming a “mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” To date, there is no public evidence that massacre suspect Loughner was in any way motivated by the national rancor over illegal immigration and the Arizona law (though open-borders extremists from the Justice Department on down most certainly wish it were so). When he complained about non-English-speakers, Loughner’s nonsensical diatribes were aimed at illiterates in general – not illegal aliens — and “grammar control” by the government.

Sheriff Dupnik’s mouth has done more to stoke self-inflicted ire against elected government clowns than anything the Right could muster against him. Had the hyper-partisan Democrat been more in tune with his job than the media airwaves, the murderous, maniacal gunman might have been stopped.

As Sheriff Dupnik himself has now admitted, Loughner leveled death threats against others that were investigated by law enforcement – and then apparently shrugged off. Locals note that Loughner’s mother worked for the county and may have had some pull. Pima County College campus police reported five serious confrontations with the mentally unstable young man before he was kicked out of the school, which he decried as an unconstitutional “torture facility.” Classmates said they feared for their lives. His friends say he was a pot-head, a 9/11 Truther, and a UFO conspiracist so kooky that even flying-objects adherents spurned him.

The worst sheriff in America is walking in the footsteps of another infamous law enforcement official who put fame, ambition, and ideology above public safety: disgraced Montgomery County, Md. Police chief Charles Moose, the publicity-hungry Keystone Cop who grossly bungled the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002. Like Dupnik, Moose let politically correct assumptions drive his investigation and incessant press conferences. He insisted on hunting the wrong vehicle while the snipers’ Chevy Caprice (spotted by several witnesses and stopped at least 10 times for license-plate checks during the shooting spree) got away. The hapless Moose clung to the notion that white militants in a non-existent white box truck were to blame – leading to a string of unnecessary murders as the real shooters escaped capture for several deadly weeks. No matter. Chief Moose cashed in on his notoriety, inked a fat book deal, and beat a hasty retreat to Hawaii.

Sheriff Dupnik is now following the same ill-gotten path. But decent Americans understand that he and his civilian counterparts have traveled a smear too far. Despite desperate attempts by the progressive Left to pin the massacre on the “harsh tone” of its political opponents, a vast majority of Americans reject the cynical campaign to criminalize conservatism, suppress political free speech, and capitalize on a madman’s crime for electoral gain. At the risk of being accused of inciting violence, you might say they’ve done gone and shot themselves in the foot.